Summer Anime 2015 Season

So like with SAO, I, an impatient idiot that can't wait for new episode next week, decided to binge read Rokka no Yuusha's LN translation (vol 1 at least)

And I must say; That's not what I fucking expected from this series at all. I expected 'whee adventure', 'boohoo rejected hero', angst, 'screw party im a solo beater' from the description.

But no, it's a friggin fantasy detective 'closed room' story, holy shit that's amazing. Who even think of doing a detective mystery in fantasy 'yuusha vs maou' world anyway? Damn, that's original.

From the episodes animated so far, it seems to be pretty good and faithful to source material, not to mention, has pretty slick animation. Come on guys, hop on the bandwagon and watch Rokka no Yuusha.

EDIT: Oh man, just finished vol 2, and I must say, I'm really liking the way the author tells the story.

Spoiler:

Definitely one of the better writers I've read. but im a filthy casual, unanalyzing, uncritical, "if its fun its good" scrub in literature (and in anything really) so iunno

Venom wrote:

So like, I finally managed to get out of my anime slump and started watching Gate. I find it unusually interesting for some odd reason... Also, dat 961 year old demi-godess wa

Well, I find Gate to be a very fresh take on the alternate world shenanigans (which kinda plague the WN/LN scene nowadays). It's really fun to see the interaction/clash between modern and medieval society that actually potrays how we advanced from the barbaric and uncivilized ways of the past. Also, I'm kinda sick of modern weaponry not having effect on magic/magical beast in most media of the same category, how magic is portrayed as almighty and awesome in the face of actual technological advancement, so this is a really fun watch for me.

Also tanks. And helicopters. Come ooonnn, you can probably say that swords can beat guns, but can you say swords beat an Apache helicopter, which has machine guns and missiles, also an unbelievably impressive complement of weaponry - an absolute death machine?

DOES ANYBODY WANT TO TALK ABOUT GARGANTIA BECAUSE WOW IS IT GOOD

Dude yeah Gargantia is awesomesauce. I think I may be behind on the OVAs though.

Where were you when that show was blowing all our socks off in 2013?

EDIT: Also feel I should mention that I just finished SAO II the other day, so I guess maybe I have no room to talk since I'm a year late on that. I didn't watch it originally because I hated the first season, but I'm gonna be using SAO clips in an AMV. So I figured I might as well watch it since I would have to spoil everything to gather clips anyways.

Holy shit SAO II is like loads better than the first season.

...well, the first half anyway. Once it abandoned the whole GGO plotline (even though there seemed to be a lose end to tie up there) it sort of lost most of what was drawing me in, not to mention the pacing was pretty bad with it jumping around and suddenly bam, Sinon's switched to ALO and is perfectly buddy-buddy with everyone after JUST being introduced to merely a small portion of them in the previous episode.

Dem feels at the end of Mother's Rosario tho.

The thing about SAO is that time passes quickly, it's one of the things I like about it specifically BECAUSE so many movies take place over the course of a couple days and everyone has decided to become life partners. SAO makes it obvious that a lot takes place between what we get to watch so the relationships feel more realistic IMO.

GGO is an awesome arc though because it's basically MMO Detective Kirito: The Animation, and Sinon's gun-nerdiness is appreciated.

And I totally don't remember you guys going nuts over Gargantia, Aldnoah Zero's the last big mecha-related thing I remember you guys gushing over. I heard a couple mentions of Captain Earth and Majestic Prince, but all of these are more recent.

BTW the dub is fucking fantastic, Alan Lee really does a great job of communicating Ledo's language barrier, that dude is seriously gonna go places (he's in the Aldnoah dub too apparently,) and the Mercman as Chamber is great. He sounds a lot like Crispin Freeman with the robot effect.

Also I am seriously upset that they scrapped a second season in favour of a goddamn novel. It's really awful because they even state that the novel is the actual ending to the series. I thought it was 26 episodes in the first place and I splurged and watched 7 last night so now it's almost done for me already...Gonna order the combo pack this weekend so I can watch the OVAs which aren't on Netflix.

What's your favorite summer Anime?
(My updated list)
-> Gate
-> Overlord
-> Gakkou

The (other) ones that I am watching
-> Gangsta
-> God Eaters
-> Kuusen Madoushi
-> Game of Laplace
-> Rokka no Yuusha
-> Arslan (It's Spring so I didn't include)

Favorite
- Overlord
- Gate
- Classroom Crisis
- Rokka no Yuusha

Unsurprisingly, Gate and Overlord stays at the top of my favorite summer Anime.
Surprisingly, Classroom Crisis is pretty damn interesting and ranked the same as the above. I expected slice of life, harem, moeblob shit from the title alone, but instead I got economics, office politics, company downsizing, and proposal writing guidelines, Wow.
Also Rokka no Yuusha.

Others I'm watching
- Aoharu x Kikanjuu
- Charlotte
- Ranpo Kitan
- God Eaters
- Probably dropping Kuusen Madoushi sometimes soon

Huh. So I don't think the OVAs included in the blu-ray set are the actual OVA listed on ANN because it sounds like that's an actual sequel. The blu-ray included episodes 14 and 15 which were basically flashback episodes to provide extra background on Ridget and Kugel. Ridget's was okay, I guess, but Kugel's was super lame.

Petite Gargantia was pretty funny though.

King Cat the Sixth wrote:

- Probably dropping Kuusen Madoushi sometimes soon

First episode: Uh, okay. It might have some potentials.
5 episodes in: ...Where are the beetles?

That anime is not really good...

As my options are limited by no PC or crunchy/funi account at the moment I finally removed the shrink wrap from my Log Horizon BDs and started watching the dub.

I both love it and hate it, in all honesty. Surfer dude Naotsugu and old spice guy Nyanta are pretty cool (Nyanta took getting used to). I both love and hate English Akatsuki as it changed her from a shy and quiet yet kawaii badass into... a pretty generic tsundere, but she's still really enjoyable and at times possibly even a lot funnier.

The worst part however is the directing, which is typical Sentai, even if it is a step above "classic ADV" level (gag). That is to say it's a small step above "terrible".

The dialogue makes no sense at times, possibly due to lines that were changed without changing the lines around them to fit a slightly different context, or what could also have been mistranslations, such as "I'm inside of a game, I can't be catching a cold." from Akatsuki when she feels a chill due to Henrietta talking about her. (That line sort of made sense I guess?)

The delivery of some lines is pretty terrible from even some voices I recognize and recall hearing better acting from. All characters mispronounce Shiroe as "Shiro" (the e isn't supposed to be silent) except for, curiously, Nyanta when he uses the nickname "Shiroechi", though I'm willing to excuse that as the e at the end could interrupt the natural flow of an english sentence without practice.

One thing that annoys the everliving crap outta me is several instances of characters. stopping in mid. sentence to. match the lip. movements.

Holy f*** Sentai, it's 2015, we've learned how to rephrase shit in such a way that that isn't necessary like AGES ago. If you still need to split the sentence to match the lip movements, there are ways to do that which sound natural in English. Full stops mid sentence do not.

Also, f*** off with the "kampai" and "sensei" crap. Yes, these are Japanese people stuck in a game, but this is an ENGLISH dub for Christ sake. To the one responsible for inserting random Japanese into the script of an English dub, please go die.

I was about to correct you about Sentai, because I figured another company was responsible for the production, but sure enough Sentai produced the dub by themselves. Wow, they must be stuck in the 90s if they're still doing that shit.

It took a while for me to warm up to FUNimation because some of their dubs are so edited it can be abrasive, but they really are at the top of their game. Of course Bang Zoom! and NYAV Post are still out there, FUNi's even hiring them because they license so much shit now (009 Re:Cyborg for example was NYAV Post)...But I'm getting the feeling that Sentai's hanging on to some seriously old values and are getting left in the dust trailing behind the hype train.

Recently I've felt like we're basically in another dub renaissance, a new tier of kick-ass quality dubs: FUNimation, Viz and Aniplex now are like what ADV, Geneon and Bandai were back in the early 2000s, except these guys got with the times. Sentai's just refusing to get with the times.

Yeah. I mean the dub gets the job done and I still enjoy it, but it's REALLY rough in spots and yanks me out of getting immersed in the narrative. There's even a spot in the round table conference where a character opens his mouth and NOTHING COMES OUT. The line is completely skipped in the dub, and instead Nyanta, who is off screen at the time, is the one talking.

I don't recall the original Japanese being like that.

Oh and did I mention that they use the clean op/ed with no credits over them, and then insert the credits as white scrolling text over a black background with NO SOUND OR MUSIC DURING THEM between episodes? Because they totally did that. The whole thing reeks of shoddy production, which depresses me because I friggin love the show and it deserved better.

Oh, also they put 9 episodes on one disc and 4 on the other for the first collection, and similarly for the second (with 1 episode less as the season was 25 eps) which makes little sense to me, and while the video quality isn't terrible, that kind of tells me they may have needlessly compressed the shit out of it. 7 and 6 would have worked just as well and been more balanced with less need to compress, guys.

Tenshigami wrote:

Also, f*** off with the "kampai" and "sensei" crap. Yes, these are Japanese people stuck in a game, but this is an ENGLISH dub for Christ sake. To the one responsible for inserting random Japanese into the script of an English dub, please go die.

How I felt when playing P3 and P4.

"Senpai" outside of a Japanese dialogue sounds really out of place IMO.

I haven't heard senpai/sempai yet thankfully, but sensei really pissed me off because there was an easy way not to use it. Naotsugu was training the newbies in the art of combat, so "coach" would have fit really well. Knowing Sentai though, it would have been an awkwardly placed "teacher" had they even tried. Sensei however just sounds awkward as hell used to address a dude in a hulking suit of EUROPEAN-style armor.

Kanpai/kampai also pissed me off as it has a perfectly normal "cheers!" that could have been used. Inexcusable.

EDIT: Oh God it's Sentai doing the Chaika dub. *runs off weeping into the distance*

Gakkou Gurashi is so good. IMO, it's rather psychological. It's moely-dark, if that even exists...

I just started watching Charlotte. I like it so far.

So K is basically To Aru Karafuru no Ikemen I guess.

This season's anime is ending. How was it?

I thought that this season was awesome.

My favorite, this season, was Gakkou Gurashi! for sure Worthy mention to Overlord, Gate, Rokka and Arslan Senki.

I can't judge God Eater just yet since... well, it's quite delayed.

Umaru was good.

What will fill the void in my Wednesdays now that Umaru is gone?

Soma was cool, still need to catch up on NNB.
Waiting for Gate S2.... It was okay though I'm sure it'd pick up when it resumes. Waiting for Overlord's last ep.

Since we've been using these for other stuff we've been watching, and it's not QUITE Fall yet, at least for anything I'm going to be watching...

Got the Beyond the Boundary BDs on friday - the collector's edition that was sort of ridiculously priced ($100) because I wanted episode 0 and they made that a bonus for the CE only. (What the f*** why would you do that? It was a bonus on the REGULAR BDs in Japan.)

1) Sentai totally fucked up the dub, as usual. A lot of the actors sound really disinterested when they're delivering their lines - Akihito sounds so BORED when he's narrating for instance. Whoever did Mirai is fairly ok at depicting a shy introvert, but HOLY SHIT does she get overly squeaky when Mirai raises her voice.They also completely fucked up the terminology - and here's where I love a good fansub, when they put a lot of effort into it. In the release, it's "Spirit World Warriors" that hunt the "yomu".

The UBW fansub translation used "Spirit Hunters" and "dreamshades". Both would have worked so much better in the dub, especially because "Spirit World Warrior" is so fucking awkward. Whether intentional or not, every actor puts emphasis on "World Warrior" which totally fucks with it. If anything, the emphasis should have been on "Spirit World" because those two words ACTUALLY GO TOGETHER to describe what kind of warrior they are. "Spirit Hunter" would have removed the problem altogether and is much easier to fit where in Japanese you have a three syllable word.

2) Holy shit I forgot how much of a tearjerker Beyond the Boundary can be. Even more so because I feel so much for Mirai and Akihito's plight - that loneliness and the sense that you will never fit in or have a place in the world. Though I'm not cursed with any sort of superpower to go with that.

I understand Mirai the most, the way she keeps her distance, gets depressed, and is extremely socially awkward. It also seems to me that if circumstances would have allowed it, and Akihito weren't around, she'd have gone full hikikomori, too.